Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg

Of course this is real problem, but like most things COVID related the public discourse has been 90% culture war, and 10% search for understanding.

Are there still major pandemic restrictions in Britain? Lots of quotes in this piece seem to imply there’s ongoing issues here but everything I see in Europe or the US from abroad seems to heavily imply that people are “back to normal” (at least in terms of movement).

The idea here (treatment delays lead to excess deaths) seems ok, but is it really the restrictions? Isn’t it more that hospitals are still extremely full? Or is that no longer the case.

The main claim of this article feel a bit… odd to me. There’s a heavy implication about this being from the lockdowns, but in the middle there are 3 lines with a much simpler explanation: Covid infections increase risk of other health issues.

I’ve really been amazed at the lack of curiosity and ability/willingness to hold multiple probability-weighted points of view at once and examine questions like “what would have to be true/false in order for us to commit to X?”, “once we’ve started to do Y, what would be the signals for us to stop doing Y?”

I had thought that people were often impatient and disinterested in hard thinking, but the extent of it surprised me, from people of all backgrounds and abilities.

Covid is one aspect of this. Another is the massive. underfunding of the NHS over the last decade. This has become much more evident post-covid thanks to the backlogs.

- Getting a GP to see you in person is now quite difficult (they want to do everything via phone). - Seeing your GP (depending on your area) can involve a 2-3 week wait and waiting in an hours long phone queue. - When you are referred to hospital for tests you can be waiting 6-12 months for the most simple things if they’re not life threatening (even if they are life limiting in the meantime).

I personally have gotten to the point where I would not want to live in this country without access to private healthcare. I’ve had a number of treatments privately and they’ve saved me months of pain, anxiety, and in one case outright refusal for treatment by the NHS until the issue became dangerous (which was inevitable).

In the UK we treat the NHS like a sacred cow. Even people who have experienced appalling treatment feel the need to exonerate the NHS when complaining about their experience. While the people that work there are not the problem (the failures of the government are) we need to start calling a spade a spade. The current condition of the NHS is atrocious. It’s not “great/the best health system in the world” and we’re no longer “so lucky to live here with the NHS”. It’s shit and it needs massive changes. Unfortunately without a change in government we’re not going to get those and people are seemingly more concerned about refugees arriving by dinghy than health care.

This was always a QALY negative treatment.

One might even conclude the reason it happened is governments seeking power (lockdowns, propaganda and censorship, travel restrictions, etc) rather than genuine public health.